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Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council 1925

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aliasesPalestine Citizenship Order 1925, 1925 Citizenship Order-in-Council

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Summary

The 1925 order-in-council that instituted Palestinian citizenship, in Banko’s account offering more favourable means of acquisition to Jewish immigrants than to Arabs from the former Ottoman provinces, Egypt and North Africa, and bolstering the mandate policy of facilitating a Jewish national homeland (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.35 / printed p.24).

Details

  • An August 1929 Arabic press editorial concluded that the 1929 riots stemmed from the Order, which supported Jewish immigration in large numbers, did not foster loyalty among newly created Jewish Palestinian citizens, and denied ipso facto citizenship to Palestinian Arabs residing even temporarily outside the mandate’s borders (PDF p.12-13 / printed p.1-2).

  • The Order and its amendments spurred wide-reaching debate over what constituted Palestinian nationality and citizenship and over the origins and definitions of Palestinian civic and political identity (PDF p.13 / printed p.2).

  • After Hanley on Egypt, Banko states the Order “did not delineate rights but rather jurisdiction”; it focused on who was a Palestinian citizen and how one could become a citizen through naturalisation (PDF p.19 / printed p.8).

  • Norman Bentwich’s 1939 explanation, as Banko presents it, was that the Order emphasised citizenship over nationality to avoid the ‘Oriental’ definition of nationality as a matter of race and religion, intending a civic but not political identity for both ‘national’ categories (PDF p.45-46 / printed p.34-35).

  • Banko’s closing Introduction claim: “The unavoidable displacement of these native Palestinians due to the 1925 Citizenship Order-in-Council is an unspoken yet crucial element of the Palestinian Arab diaspora today as well as during the interwar years.” (PDF p.32 / printed p.21)

  • Article 1, mirroring Article 30 of the Treaty of Lausanne, declared all ‘Turkish subjects’ habitually resident in Palestine on 1 August 1924 to become automatically Palestinian citizens on 1 August 1925; ‘Turkish subjects’ referred to all Ottoman nationals as defined by the Ottoman Nationality Law of 1869, and nearly 730,000 Ottoman nationals resident in Palestine became citizens under it; a subsequent article did the same for non-Ottoman residents who had received provisional Palestinian nationality through the 1922 electoral order (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.61 / printed p.50).

  • Article 2 allowed individuals over eighteen, born in Palestine with Ottoman nationality and habitually resident abroad on 1 August 1925, to opt for citizenship subject to the consent of the Government of Palestine, after six months in Palestine and provided they had not acquired a foreign nationality, within two years of the Order, by 31 July 1927; its ‘born in Palestine’ wording, replacing Lausanne Article 34’s ‘native of’ on the Home Office recommendation against indefinite transmission by birth, denied ipso facto citizenship to certain descendants of Ottomans born in the territory and contradicted Lausanne, British nationality law, the 1869 Ottoman law and the French mandates’ laws, all of which supported jus sanguinis acquisition (PDF p.61-62 / printed p.50-51).

  • Naturalisation applicants were required to declare permanent residence in Palestine, take an oath of allegiance and show an ability to converse in English, Arabic or Hebrew, and to surrender a passport or laissez-passer on receipt of citizenship documentation — a surrender distinct from renunciation of birth nationality (PDF p.62 / printed p.51).

  • In November 1925 Herbert Samuel, exercising sole power to amend the Order before he left office, put the two-year option period into effect retroactively from 6 August 1924, the date Lausanne came into force as printed there, leaving the estimated 20,000-25,000 Palestinian-born individuals abroad, mostly Arab Christians and Muslims including students and merchants, less than one year to opt; Palestinians abroad on 1 August 1924 were barred unless they returned by 1 August 1926, and the Order was not published broadly outside Palestine until at least November 1925 (PDF p.62-63 / printed p.51-52).

  • The Order was the only citizenship order Britain enacted in any of its mandate territories; in Iraq and Transjordan local Arab authorities were placed in charge of nationality legislation, and in Britain’s African mandates inhabitants remained British-protected persons; only in May 1925 was its title changed from the Palestine Nationality Law to the Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council, with ‘nationality’ crossed out and replaced by ‘citizenship’ throughout the text a month before ratification (PDF p.61 / printed p.50, PDF p.63 / printed p.52).

  • In Banko’s conclusion to Chapter 2, the Order offered a local citizenship independent of British nationality, its holders treated as British-protected persons outside Palestine; it did not grant the rights Arabs agitated for, and the Permanent Mandates Commission’s October 1925 view that it ‘should do much to strengthen a sense of Palestinian nationality’ was, Bentwich’s later recollection excepted, an intention the officials who advised on it never held (PDF p.64-65 / printed p.53-54).

  • Arabic newspapers titled the published Order the ‘Nationality Law’ (al-qanun al-jinsiyya or al-haqq al-jinsiyya), and its official Arabic translation in the Palestine Gazette used ‘jinsiyya’ (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.91 / printed p.80).

  • Chapter 4’s completion records the emigrant campaign against the Order: the ‘right to return’ (haqq al-‘awda) demand, the Committee for the Defence of Arab Emigrant Rights to Palestinian Citizenship (DAER) formed in 1927, and official refusal to extend the timeframe, the Colonial Office insisting Turkish consent was needed while advising against contacting Turkey and no such correspondence existing in the archives (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.106-123 / printed p.95-112).

  • Chapter 5 records the Order in operation: naturalisation certificates could be annulled after three years’ absence without explanation; Palestine passports, in regular printing only from 1926, were limited to two years’ validity for naturalised citizens from November 1926; dual nationality was acceptable only for Jewish immigrants; and Jewish men who naturalised could add minor children born outside the territory to their certificates while children of Arab parents resident abroad without citizenship were not to be considered Palestinian (PDF p.124-125 / printed p.113-114, PDF p.137-138 / printed p.126-127, PDF p.141-142 / printed p.130-131).

  • The Order was amended by the Palestine Citizenship Order (Amendment) 1931, ratified in July 1931, which incorporated ‘treaty nationality’ for those resident abroad between 1924 and 1925 only and gave the high commissioner explicit power to revoke or annul a naturalisation certificate for any reason deemed legitimate (PDF p.147 / printed p.136).

The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, Palestinian nationality, Norman Bentwich, Provisional Palestinian nationality

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